This Isn’t Normal

“Are women intoxicating anymore?” asks F. Scott Fitzgerald. “Are men brutish?”

Louis Hill Jr. begins, “Let me take you back to the 1920s; a time when women had small but shapely breasts. A time when women were soft and round and slim and they were powdered and they wore their hair short in smooth shiny curls. …When they walked in and out of rooms you could smell them and it smelled divine.”

“You’d walk up behind a woman and surprise her. And she would have to be coaxed into thinking that it was necessary, but if she loved you…you knew it was only a matter of time and enough kisses on her neck before you’d be making love. And this was common. This was typical. This wasn’t an exceptional experience.” says Harold Loeb.

Lacey‘s neighbor across the street spies Lacey sitting on her front porch wearing a pillowcase on her head. The porch is a mess to L and she highly suspects that her neighbor thinks it’s all very hilarious in the most idiotic way. But of course if she is an idiot in a way…she’d be the first person to say that Lacey probably doesn’t understand a great many things because that’s what people do when they don’t understand, they go around finding things wrong with everyone else because everything is so astounding to them daily. But maybe her neighbor is innocent it’s just that Lacey has had so many difficulties with people who find so many things that are ordinary so astounding. *eye-roll*

“She also keeps pacing back-and-forth with an iPhone and it looks…very…creepy.” says Harold Loeb.

“Yeah, I don’t know why this woman is standing and staring at me. It’s very strange but she’s just standing there staring with her iPhone camera.“ says Lacey. “I literally just had a staring contest with her. I think I just won but it was incredibly immature and awkward, but I guess I don’t know some people matter how old they get never grow up or maybe I’m older than her or something I don’t know.” says Lacey.

“She’s acting like a freak. She’s acting like a stalker and I don’t think she realizes how she looks to any reasonable person coming from your perspective.” says Louis Hill Jr..

“She’s really attached to your house Lacey like really attached to your house and it’s possible that her dead husband is also really attached to your house.” says Harold Loeb.

“It’s like why is she deciding to have this bizarre staring contest? I don’t understand. This is my property. I own this house. And she doesn’t even own that house.“ says Lacey.

“But you have to ask yourself why she’s renting the house across the street and she doesn’t own it. Isn’t that rather suspicious? I mean she used to own your house. She used to own your house Lacey, and she doesn’t anymore. She’s renting. She’s renting the house across the street from the house she used to own. …She’s renting the house across the street from the house that she used to own. …Unfortunately with you, there will always be three issues: your intelligence, your beauty and your money. People who don’t have as much beauty will be jealous. People who don’t have as much intelligence will be threatened, and people who don’t have as much money will be enraged.” says Harold.

“You know I grew-up with women, bullying me for my beauty, and it was kind of par for the course. And I grew up with people being threatened by my intelligence that was also just par for the course. The times I get praise for my beauty or my intelligence, but there was a lot more noteworthy hate directed at me than praise. But my parents had a very meek very meek lifestyle. So…I didn’t understand that our background was that offensive too. It was a way of gaining more approval in the past from people whereas now it’s just offensive.” says Lacey.

More later.

VHS Dream by Deerhunter plays.

“Hi! I am Carolyn Kennedy. You know me from a plane crash in which I died.” says Carolyn with a laugh. “What irritates me is that Lacey has absolutely no fear about dating a bisexual man and that’s actually incredibly progressive and unusual even for a Millennial. Lem well…Lem might’ve actually been straight and that’s all say because I shouldn’t say anything more certain… I am dead, and Lacey is my translator and that’s not a role that she has asked for. …She’s very confident in her femininity and her womanhood and her heterosexuality. So confident that she’s able to date a man who may have been bisexual, or actually was. And I mean Michael Rockefeller, by the way, not Lem. …Why don’t people respect that more? …As I’m talking I get the sense that people believe that I would talk to her…so why do you think I’m talking to her but Lem isn’t? Lem may actually have been straight? And why don’t you think that it’s cool if Michael Rockefeller was bisexual and they could’ve been happily married? I think people don’t like change. …I mean Lacey is not sold on the progressive agenda, but she’s not afraid of differences if they’re workable; like truly feasible. …And I think it’s lovely that Lem had this vile life and then he’s able to have some sort of happiness in this rare way if they’re actually communicating between two different realms of humans. …So I think part of peoples problem is that it’s shocking because it’s different to think of Lem being straight and being confused, and someone being that capable of pretending to be the supposedly disenfranchised group of people. I think he’s probably the only person that’s ever made that mistake. I have a feeling it’s a lot easier to make that mistake if you’ve been molested, than you might think. …I think, though that all that being said about change and the uniqueness of the situation that the real culprit, the real enemy of Lacey is misogyny. If the illuminati exists I think a lot of the attacks that came at her originated in this hidden subversive hatred of women in the Democratic Party. …Why can’t she be what Michael Rockefeller would prefer to a man why can’t she be a housewife and be happy if that’s what she knowingly chooses for herself? Why can’t she be a super feminine and collect perfume and yet still be straight and still be intelligent? Why can’t she get angry and stand up for herself, which is something I relate to, and still be feminine, and still be intelligent and still be straight? Why do we want to limit Lacey? Why are we so desperate to control her? That weird! Why can’t Lem be with a woman and be happier than he ever was with JFK? Why do we assume that that was the answer that Lem was looking for? His happiest life was to have no wife of his own no spouse and just follow someone around his whole life? …I’m being interrupted and attacked right now and I don’t know if it’s by Bobby or some other asshole or a demon or who the fuck it is but it pisses me off and it pisses off Lacey as well. I’m being interrupted and attacked right now and I don’t know if it’s by Bobby or some other asshole or a demon or who the fuck it is but it pisses me off and it pisses off Lacey as well. …And what I keep trying to say is probably super upsetting to people who are pissy little wimps?! OK what I’m trying to say and I’ll try to say it in a way that doesn’t sound like me so it isn’t quite so scary if people are listening…”

Lacey’s ex-husband strangely interrupts.

He leaves.

“What I’m trying to say is that when Lem says ‘What the hell I mean I could’ve had a family of my own but what the hell.’ that said in that way is not a a gay man in the closet who is trying to pontificate about the meaning of his life being all about JFK. That’s not a ringing endorsement for gay marriage and he sounds legitimately angry. It’s more like, ‘I was never lonely I mean I could’ve had a family of my own but what the hell?’ You know it’s like he follows this ‘I was never lonely he may been why I never got married.’ with ‘I mean I could’ve had a family of my own’ and the fact that he follows that so quickly with a statement that sounds angry. Why do people today just ignore the latent animosity and the minimization of his life by himself? I wouldn’t be the minimization of his life. He minimizes his life down to a bedroom in the White House, seeing history up close and personal, and being JFK’s best friend not his lover, his best friend. Not having JFK as his best friend but being JFK’s best friend. That’s also interesting differentiation that he makes.” says Carolyn.

“That’s not Carolyn! Lem was gay! And this is obnoxious to me!” says Wobbly. “You know that’s not Carolyn and you know he was gay and you’re lying about it because you’re just a hideous person.”

“Well are you you?” asks Carolyn of Wobbly.

“I’m not going to dignify this bullshit with a response.” says Wobbly. “I am too good for all of this. I am such a big deal. You have no idea what a big deal I am. I have a headache that I even have to acknowledge that you exist.”

“OK but like what happens when you die and if these are like actual ghosts of people that you knew?” asks Lacey.

“There is no God! When I die I will cease to exist. I am an incredibly educated, intelligent man and I know for a fact that, according to science, there is no God and no I’m not being facetious or ironic. Ha ha. I get the joke! Science! But I know there’s no God OK it’s obvious! Any idiot knows that there’s no God.” says Wobbly.

“So if you die and go to a lower place in Purgatory, which is why I keep warning you about how will that be for you then?“ asks Lacey.

“That isn’t going to happen! OK that isn’t going to happen! That would never happen to me. That would never happen to me. OK that that is not ever some thing that would happen to me.“ says Wobbly.

“I can’t make you repent. I can’t make you. But I’m accountable to God and it scares me you scare me and I really hope you work on your relationship with Christ before you die because it’s not through other people that were saved it’s not through anything other than Jesus Christ.” says Lacey.

“OK first of all I keep making a point and no one is listening to it. Lem sounds angry and you can say, ‘Well he says he was the best friend that anyone could ever ask for and I was his best friend!’ Yes! But he’s comparing and contrasting that to having a life of his own living somewhere. And everything else other than the friendship that he describes, which apparently is just the best sound so shallow: a bedroom and an eyewitness to history. As compared and contrasted to having his own key phrase, his own family. …If I’m Carolyn I’m just gonna say it: Lem was straight. Lem was straight; he was confused and he was trying to be positive and get people’s approval with that statement who were listening to him who wanted him to be in love with JFK even though they would’ve never outright said that themselves at that time. And one way you can see that is that a we’ve interpreted what he was trying to say to mean that he had the best friend ever and he was his best friend and they were the lovers of the century and that’s really the only part of the quotation that anyone takes seriously other than the fact that he says he may have been the reason and he was you know that he didn’t get married and I was never lonely. People take those two parts of what he said and then disregard the entire rest of everything else. And that’s weird. Why don’t people ever realize that he sounds pissed off when he says, ‘I mean I could’ve had a family life of my own but what the hell?’ that that way of saying ‘I mean I could have’ is a strange way of putting it if you’re not angry. He sounds angry OK you guys he sounds angry and until people are honest about that why do you expect Lacey who could be talking to his ghost to give you an ounce of intellectual respect?” says Carolyn. “I mean frankly, the whole he was my best friend I was his best friend thing after saying ‘I mean I could’ve had a family of my own’ sounds patronizing to me. That’s what it sounds like to my ears it sounds patronizing.” She smiles. “And at their wedding he doesn’t look sad like a jealous lover he just doesn’t and I am sorry, but he just doesn’t. …It’s shocking! And it’s hard for Lacey to accept because Lacey is far more scrupulous than the people who have concocted this fairytale that Lem was gay based on his confused life if he was actually straight.”

“Did you read that quotation before or after you started interacting with his possible ghost?” asks a man in the Illuminati.

“I don’t see what difference that makes but I read it after…and actually when I first read it I thought it sounded weird. The cadence really as a writer from my perspective is off if it’s just a ringing endorsement of his life that he lived…it doesn’t there’s something weird about his word choice and the way that he phrases things. And yet I tried to assume the worst, you know I tried to assume that he really was actually trying to make a love statement…but I had-I literally felt like he was umm…at least probably him…seemingly him…was yelling at me.” says Lacey. “I mean I can feel it right now that he is angry and that he was upset. At least it seems like it’s him and no it’s like I’m being yelled at it’s hard to explain other than just say it’s like when someone gets very passionate and emotional and then starts yelling while they’re alive.”

“No like you actually feel like you’re being really like he’s really yelling at you?!” says a man in the Illuminati in disbelief.

“Yes and I would feel guilty and amiss ignoring it. I would be being irresponsible as a person if I didn’t think that it could be him and most likely is him, and that he is trying to tell me that in his own words, ‘I was incredibly angry at Jack when I said that!’ that’s what he said to me he said, ‘When I said that I was very angry at Jack. I hated him.’” says Lacey.

“No that’s not what he said! You’re making that up! Stop lying. I do it all the time but you need to stop you need to stop making stupid shit up to sound cruel or intelligent. It’s obvious you’re just making that up.“ says Wobbly.

“Actually, it’s not obvious and that’s where to me you seem like an immature prick who can’t get over himself!” says a dead Catholic woman who’s been listening. “Do you want me to tell you what happened? I’m an objective observer. I don’t know any of you. I wasn’t rich. I lived in West St. Paul.”

“Actually I would. I would love to know what she has to say.” says a man who lived in and owned Lacey’s house.

“I would! This woman seems genuinely objective, if anyone’s interested in hearing my opinion.” says Harold Loeb.

“Add my yea to that group of people who think that it would be good to hear with this woman has to say.” says Louis.

“Lacey is being told to say that Lem was gay. You guys something is literally interrupting my conversation with her to try to instruct her like she’s an idiot who won’t know the difference into saying that he was gay under the guise that I am the one telling her that. Do you have any idea how disrespectful that is to God and to me and to Lacey?” says the woman from West St. Paul. She sighs. “Quit interrupting us! I know you’re telling her to say other lies because that isn’t me!!” she yells. She attempts to start again. “If there is an Illuminati you people are like idiotic chattering demons who can’t shut-up when it comes to Lacey. And you think there’s gonna be no consequences for being such idiots because God knows your heart?! Or what?! What you’re doing is wrong! Get a clue!” she says, enraged. “You’re not Lem’s sexual gatekeepers! Any of you! And to think that you are is ludicrous. It’s an embarrassment to you and your families.” she says.

“See you can’t stop us, though! Which just means that essentially you’re nothing compared to us! OK you fucking idiot?!” says Mr. Blue to the ghost on behalf of him and Wobbly.

“That’s an absolutely moronic statement. Do you realize how stupid you sound?!” says Lem to Mr. Blue.

“Yeah and I could destroy the US banking system. …Remember how I threw that out a couple of months ago actually was more than a couple months ago. I could do it! I was the one that brought it up. I did it! I brought it up! Not anyone else! Me! And I’m dead. …I’m trying to help you understand how dumb what you’re doing is.” says Michael to Mr. Blue.

“OK whatever you don’t understand spirituality like I do but OK.” says Mr. Blue seriously.

“Are you being serious? That is the dumbest thing I think I’ve ever heard you’re talking to a ghost!” says the woman from West St. Paul. “I am let’s see if I can say this. I am straight. But I knew a gay man once who was a lot like Lem. He had a rough up-bringing and he got in to drinking; a real hard life. He never once ever approached me and talk to me in a sexual way, except for one night when he was sad and he said to me, ‘If I had known what it was gonna be like to be so alone and old age I would’ve married a woman.’ And I said to him, ‘But you knew that that wasn’t what was right for you, right?’ And he looked right at me and he said ‘Listen, you’re not supposed to know this, but I have wanted to make a pass at you for years.’” She laughs. “And I said, ‘Well sure, but it’s not right to live a lie.’ And he looked me dead in the eye and he said ‘I’ll tell you I’ve never really been a homosexual. My dad molested me when I was a child and I’ve never gotten over it and all these years I’ve been trying to make sense of what he did to me by making it somehow making it my choice.’” She looks sad. “And I said, ‘I never knew. I never would’ve known that you had had such a thing happened to you.’ And see that’s what you’ve gotta understand about my generation we didn’t think things through the way that you guys do today we just didn’t. He he told me that he was a straight man. He was! He was a straight man who was trying to make sense of terrible abuse. Don’t be so sure you’ve interpreted Lem’s words as they were meant in the way that he actually said them. People talk differently nowadays than they did in the past and they have different ways of seeing things. I can tell you, but it’s going to be hard for you to understand and it’s gonna be hard for Lacey to believe and I think you know what that means. He was probably straight and you probably massacred that quotation in your historical analysis.” She prays. “You have no idea how much pain Lacey’s been through. You have absolutely no idea what you’ve done to her life and that’s terrifying to me. Lem Billings was straight. Lem was a heterosexual man.”

“Why do you guys diminish him having his own wife and family is that like a carryover from the feminist movement in some weird way?“ asks a Millennial actress of the gay Illuminati.

“Do you know for a fact that Lem was straight because that’s the next thing you know that they’re going to say. They’ll say that you don’t really know you just have some old-fashioned opinion.” says Louis.

“Yes. I do know.” says the ghost from West St. Paul.

“I didn’t mean it in the way that it’s been taken. I, I think it’s sad that people don’t hear the insidious insult that is laced into my words.” says Lem. “Because there’s an insult in there and you have to be blind not to see it. I am essentially saying that being married being settled down, having a family, having kids, having a house, having a stable life of your own and being a middle-class person is gross to me, according to you. And you know you could make me out to be a shallow man, but I wasn’t. I just wasn’t. I wasn’t that shallow. I was insulting all gay men. I was calling you guys supercilious fuckards in the nicest way possible. …I know this is Lacey hearing this right now but I’m telling you , I literally was feeling incredible rage and animosity towards my friends, towards homosexuals in general, towards Jack, and that living somewhere is a quotation from Here To Eternity. And if one of you can honestly say that you were there when I said it, or you know someone who was who was honest about what I was actually saying who was there then I will take I will take what you’re saying and I will work through it with Lacey. But you can’t keep insisting that you know what I was saying.” He sighs. “I was insulting you, and that’s unfair because people in my day were a lot more likely to live the life that I lead than they are today. And you know while the phone was dead Lacey pointed out to me that it does sound romantic the way that I put it and that one particular spot especially And you know while the phone was dead Lacey pointed out to me that it does sound romantic the way that I put it and that one particular spot especially. And it does sound romantic possibly but it also doesn’t sound romantic possibly and you have to admit that. To Lacey‘s ears when she first heard it, it sounded not so much gay as like a hyperbole… …Let’s just say that it was hyperbole or something along those lines, or that I was trying to intimate something, but I wasn’t…I wasn’t actually endorsing it, which sounds so weak, compared to what I may have actually meant if I was really as angry as I have said. But I could’ve been trying to say, ‘Hey, I lived the gay life and it’s total fucking shit and I’m mad as hell but who cares right!? I’ll let you decide. I’ll let history decide how shitty of a life I actually had.’ And let’s just say that it was something like that or far worse and I’m holding back because I haven’t fully explained it to Lacey and it’s possible there are things that she doesn’t know that make me seem even angrier and ‘more straighter’ so to speak about the context in which I said it, the people I was talking to, etc.. …If I am real and I am Lem and we’re together I now have to spend the rest of Lacey‘s life trying to convince her that I was straight. And I don’t think you realize what that’s like for me because she is completely fine with the thought that I was gay and then I just somehow would’ve still preferred her. And that’s not an easy thing to do in enough itself to convince her that I really was capable of preferring her to JFK. …And then on top of that, I have to you know, convince her that I am real, that God is possibly allowing me to talk with her and be with her before her death. And that’s a lot right there that’s a lot but then on top of that I’m supposed to somehow convince her that I was straight if I was actually straight and it’s exasperating. And it’s difficult to deal with the fact that there are possibly people in secret societies that have ways of listening that aren’t fair to begin with…and then they use those privileges to harass and try to destroy Lacey‘s life, not for Satan mystic purposes, that is incredibly self-indulgent and delusional of them to suppose about themselves, and their true intentions. And you could say, ‘Yeah well that’s how Satan works.’ OK a charismatic Christian might say that. But it’s not Satanism! What they’re doing is based on a pathological obsession with Lacey. They have no deeper meaning to what they’re doing. They’re just immature, naive idiots. …And then, on top of the idiot brigade of the so-called illuminated, should that organization exist… I have to deal with the fact that there are other dead, living in Christ men who Lacey could be with.”

“Lem got cut off quite a few times. There was a lot that he was trying to say that was far more eloquent than what is being put down on the blog.” says Louis. “You’re not hearing everything he’s thinking because he says it in his own words and then people play with Lacey‘s phone and think that it won’t matter no one reads her blog or somehow it just won’t matter. These people don’t understand the Illuminati. They’re new money, they’re idiots and they’re controlling as fuck! And they don’t understand what’s for their own good. They have no idea when to just let things go because they don’t know they don’t know what their motivations are. They…they cannot stand the fact that she knows more than they do about a great many things. I mean, isn’t that why you approached her to begin with right because she knew something and she had some authority in the perfume community and she irritated you because you think you’re a fucking expert?! Because you joined the illuminati and you grew up in white poverty and so you think because you went to Brown and you joined the Illuminati that you want-you’re like Chris Hayes! You’re a big fucking big shot! And so when you see someone who has some authority over some issue or knows something that you don’t have any knowledge about your ego is violently threatened, isn’t that right? You’ll never be anything more than a low class workaholic asshole. That’s all you are! You’re not the expert of the fucking universe you fucking idiot! …You’re not old money and neither was your little nitwit mistress who instigated the attack on Lacey by the Illuminati to get even with her for existing. …You’re both hicks. You are both backward hicks and you’re both incredibly bitter about it. Can you try to get over it or do we have to bring round the end of the world to get you to morons to get into your place? She burst your bubble. She burst both of your narcissistic bubbles. And your resort was to try to inculcate her into the illuminati to make her feel like she was losing her mind or what you sacrificed her family, because the whole nation is essentially a bankrupt piece of shit. …And it’s embarrassing to me that they did. And it’s embarrassing to me that they didn’t realize how dumb they make the entire fucking country look either trying to sacrifice her family or by patronizing your absolute astronomical idiocy.” He seethes. “Do you have any idea what a fucking mess you morons have made of everything? And then you think you have the right to tell her anything?!? No, you Mr. Blue, Wobbly and the Bat Crew should shut-up for your own damn good. And don’t misunderstand my words you little nothing and you know who I’m talking to, and I say that you are nothing compared to me. I am better educated and far smarter than you are.” says Louis.

“He’s right. I was far too nice to most people and it gave a lot of you the wrong impression about a great many things.” says Prince Philip.

“And I’m going to have to treat all of you like you don’t necessarily exist because that’s the reality that Lacey has to live with. So we are no longer going to have discussions about whether or not I was homosexual. I will have to explain myself to her over time in my own way if I’m real. And I’m not particularly worried about it. If I am Lem Billings. And in that sense I may worry somewhat about other men, but I don’t worry that God won’t give me a chance to try to explain to her that I love her and explain who I really am. And was. And so on that note, we will no longer be having discussions of this nature unless absolutely necessary and believe me when I say that it’s a warning to you. Will you always be dumber than Louis Hill Junior, what was Prince Philip hiding about the nature of reality because he was trying to be nice those are interesting questions?”

A few minutes later.

“I didn’t think that that statement that Lem made was clear and that’s all that I should probably say. ….That being said what really fascinated me was my next door neighbor.” says Lacey. “She was very odd this morning. And honestly…her dead husband might have expressed some sadness to me about certain things.”

“What sort of things, darling?” asks Lem.

Lace smiles sheepishly.

F. Scott Fitzgerald laughs.

“Huh. Hey, Mr. Blue…you wanna get into a fight with Louis again?” says Lacey jokingly.

“It can’t be that bad!” says Mr. Blue.

“What if it is?!” says Louis.

“What did he tell you?!” asks Lem of Lacey.

“He told me it was difficult to watch his wife date other men.” says Lacey.

Later.

“Except you didn’t just say that he was upset you said he was angry and I think that’s important distinction. A man who is angry that his wife is dating other people isn’t someone who is just disappointed. It’s someone who is very angry.” says Lem to Lacey. “Your ex-husband and you had a conversation today about how he had seen men dating your neighbor who used to own your house, who may have a dead husband who was able to talk to you for some reason. And he said that he had seen men at her house and you hadn’t, but you had the sense from her ex-husband that there had been men at her house, and that it was very upsetting to him. Lacey, it’s stuff like that that is harder to explain away than you think. …And I am going to spend the rest of your life proving the truth to you because I want you to understand that I love you more than I’ve loved any other human to ever exist.” he says. “ and when you die should I be lame I don’t want the transition to be shocking to you. I want it to be very simple and obviously God has to be there and make the entire thing happen.”

“What is it that is so disconcerting to me about him?” asks Lacey.

“Empathy. Grief that you can’t really say anything, and I think on certain level you might even feel some shock because it probably is shocking to him.” says Lem.

“Did he just not expect her to date that many other people? I mean is she even dating that many other people but if she is, did he really think that she wouldn’t and if so what what is it about that that makes me so uneasy?” says Lacey.

“I think it’s that it’s a façade. It’s it’s that you don’t like the fact that there was any sort of façade and it’s just devastating to you to think that he didn’t know if he didn’t know that part of her somehow she could’ve predicted it or some thing.“ says Lacey.

More later.